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Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#73

Post by kellishaver »

I have a Macbook that runs Leopard and my desktop runs WinXP Pro. I prefer the Mac OS to Windows, but the Windows PC has more powerful hardware for running the graphics apps and my little white Macbook just can't keep up.It also has a 24in display and a full-size keyboard, which makes it a little more practicle to use for long periods of time. Some day, when I can justify the expense of a 24in iMac, I'll switch entirely to Mac. In the mean time, I use them both about equally. The Mac is far superior as a dev environment.

Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#75

Post by krakensden »

psadauskas wrote: post #34
dtf wrote: post #30

Question for Mac/Windows users: I develop on Linux, but occasionally on Mac or Windows. To be honest I'm pretty happy with a text editor and a few terminals on any platform, but one thing I miss is fast window management. Specifically: * Focus follows mouse * Alt+LMB drag to move whole window * Alt+MMB drag to move nearest corner (ie resize) The default Mac interface in particular I find difficult, as there's just on…

I'm the same. I use Windows for gaming, and I have a case of Mac envy for all the slick apps, but everytime I get more than a couple windows open, I really, really miss my tiling window manager ( http://awesome.naquadah.org/ ). Not having anything I need within one or two keystrokes (or having to reach for the mouse) feels very cumbersome now.

I feel the same way about window managers. For some reason, the less user friendly they get, the more usable they are.

Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#77

Post by minus1 »

ratsbane wrote: post #68
minus1 wrote: post #57

I assume this type of poll is self-selecting and that Windows is greatly underrepresented. In a 2005 article, PG states that the ycombinator visitor OS breakdown is as follows: Windows 66.4%, Macintosh 18.8%, Linux 11.4%, and FreeBSD 1.5% I would love to see the current OS breakdown from ycombinator logs to compare. Anyone?

Here's a breakdown based on referrals from YC to a short essay I wrote about a month ago comparing Bing Travel and Kayak. There were 2382 uniques from YC over two days to that page: 45.5% Windows 37.6% Mac 15.1% Linux Comparing that with an e-commerce site I work with which has a less geek-centric audience, during the same two days: 84.94% Windows 12.46% Mac 1.55% Linux

Thanks for the information. These numbers seem more plausible given my own anecdotal evidence. Now compare this to the poll percentages:

  21.37% Windows (199)
  40.28% Mac (375)
  35.12% Linux (327)
My conclusion is that a Linux user is far more motivated than a Mac or Windows user to respond to this poll, making the results interesting, but not accurate.

Re: Poll: What OS do you use everyday, or most often?

#78

Post by mixmax »

ratsbane wrote: post #68
minus1 wrote: post #57

I assume this type of poll is self-selecting and that Windows is greatly underrepresented. In a 2005 article, PG states that the ycombinator visitor OS breakdown is as follows: Windows 66.4%, Macintosh 18.8%, Linux 11.4%, and FreeBSD 1.5% I would love to see the current OS breakdown from ycombinator logs to compare. Anyone?

Here's a breakdown based on referrals from YC to a short essay I wrote about a month ago comparing Bing Travel and Kayak. There were 2382 uniques from YC over two days to that page: 45.5% Windows 37.6% Mac 15.1% Linux Comparing that with an e-commerce site I work with which has a less geek-centric audience, during the same two days: 84.94% Windows 12.46% Mac 1.55% Linux

Interesting to see those and grandparents numbers and compare them with the poll.

Seems like there's a discrepancy somewhere, and I would say that it's users voting for the OS they would like to use as their main OS and not the one they actually use.

The little tricks that psychology plays on us...

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